


Free Space

by PaintedYertle



Category: The Outsiders (1983), The Outsiders - All Media Types, The Outsiders - S. E. Hinton
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Post-Canon, Yuletide 2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 14:18:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13055712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaintedYertle/pseuds/PaintedYertle
Summary: That space was one of the few things in his life he didn’t need to reach an expectation for. It was just an ever-present right, and he hoped his brothers and everyone else in his life felt the same way.





	Free Space

**Author's Note:**

  * For [firth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/firth/gifts).



> Thanks to the recip for including so many prompts! It helped. I sort of combined a few of them even if I wasn't able to do all the ones that appealed to me (darn you, deadlines and real life!) Hope you like it at least. Happy holidays! :)

The current state of the Curtis household made it evident that Darry had left the house for a few days. In the living room alone there was only one cleared-off square of carpet on the floor, surrounded by furniture Ponyboy and Sodapop had pushed to the side which also had an assortment of junk piled onto them. Pony and Soda stood across from each other.

It was typical for wrestling matches to be held in the living room, but Two-Bit and Steve could always sprint out the door after they broke another lamp. Ponyboy and Sodapop not only wanted to prevent a hollering as much as possible but at the same time would feel bad if Darry came home to broken glass. The two knew they’d be rushing to clean and straighten everything up moments before Darry stepped foot on the front steps, but for now Sodapop picked up a pen from top of the television that was on but had the volume turned all the way down.

“Okay kid,” Sodapop said over the radio, “Pretend this is a blade.”

Ponyboy set his shoes flat on the ground. It’s been a while since he’s been jumped. He’s grown a bit in the last year, gradually losing that scrappy babyface and getting stronger. Darry taught Soda to lift properly, so Pony picked up on some ways to do the same in a small space.

“Since when are you good at knife fighting?” asked Ponyboy.

“Oh c’mon,” said Sodapop, “Don’t you know I’m best at the old D&D: Dodge and Deflect?” Soda grinned at his own joke

“I wouldn’t say it like that to the cops if I was you.”

“Shut your pie-hole,” Soda glanced at the mess around them, all the way to the dishes in the kitchen which were washed but not dried, “Also I can’t find another pen right now. So for now you go unarmed.”

Figures, it’s always the pens that go missing right when you need them. Pony knew that better than anyone, having turning his writing into a habit in the last year.

Soda started off by approaching Ponyboy casually. Pony tried to slowly circle around him to figure out his moves. He was pretty familiar with the way his brothers fought already, but usually there was no thought put into it. Once Soda actually moved forward, he leaned on one foot, and Ponyboy was reminded of the sword fighting in some of the stage plays he liked. He also noticed his brother was jabbing at the air around his target rather than at him. It made it all the more pathetic when he managed to poke Ponyboy in the arm.

Pony managed to knock the piece of plastic out of Sodapop’s hands just by shoving him. Pushing each other around was something he was the most familiar with. It wasn’t long after that until Pony found himself in a headlock with Soda’s knuckles sanding at his scalp. Sodapop’s laughter seemed to destroy the environment he was going for.

“Um,” Ponyboy said over Sodapop’s arm, “How’s this supposed to help me in a fight again?” Sodapop froze, then dropped Ponyboy to the ground.

“Expect the unexpected,” Sodapop deadpanned, accentuating by pointing at him, “Now where’d I drop that pen?”

Soda glanced around the floor as Ponyboy pushed himself off the floor. It was mere seconds for the pen to be found and for his brother to lunge again. The split second hit during his attempt to stand and all the panic alarms screeched in Ponyboy’s brain, making him lose track of his surroundings. Sodapop wasn’t running at him that fast but at the angle of Pony being closer to the ground and momentum allowed Pony to flip Soda over his shoulder. It was loud crash that dragged him back to reality. His body tensed up.

Ponyboy turned around to see Sodapop flat on his back next to the television with the heels of his shoes up on the wall. Sodapop let out a grunt that was all at once surprised but holding back his shock.

“Christ almighty,” he said, “Since when can you do that?”

Ponyboy, very much present in reality now, held his hands up like he was being prosecuted, “Uh. I just. I pick some things up from the guys when we tussle. Um. You hurt?”

“At least you missed the TV. Glory…” Sodapop began to sit back up and Ponyboy immediately crawled over to lend a hand. When Soda pulled his feet down, he froze. Ponyboy had a moment of panic rush through him thinking he hurt his brother, but then Soda sat up all the way to reveal there was a dent in the wall. It small and not deep, like a cracked eggshell, but noticeable. Ponyboy’s panic flared up even more.

The two brothers stared at it, then at each other.

“Darry’s gonna kill us,” said Ponyboy, and Sodapop nodded, “After that, he’ll make it off of the residual checks alone.”

Until now Sodapop was vaguely staring at the dent with his hand over his mouth, but his head turned sharply to Ponyboy like a bird.

“Not funny.” said Sodapop.

Ponyboy got to his feet and moved to one side of the television, making an attempt to push it but still too heavy. “Can you help me with this?”

“I’m serious, Pony. After everything that happened you shouldn’t talk like that.”

“I didn’t mean it. I was only kidding.”

“Well you know what they say about habits. The real problem is when you do it without thinking.”

The next day, mid-cleanup, they rearranged most of the house to distract from what they were hiding. Darry had been on a weekend ski trip with a group of his old high school friends. Darry almost turned them down, what with work and taking care of his brothers, but lately Sodapop and Ponyboy wouldn’t have it and pushed him into going out. Before it started out with little things like staying out for a drink or two with the other construction workers since he came of age, and now it nudged him into this.

Ponyboy was happy for him, but at the same time Darry had gotten a tendency to hover since the incident from the year prior. They still needed him, but for now Pony was glad for the space and breathing room.

Still, Darry found the crack on the wall without fail. Ponyboy wandered off to another room to avoid the brunt of the humiliation and inevitable punishment but Sodapop stayed like he didn’t know why they even tried.

Darry stood to his feet and peeled his eyes away, then scanned the remainder of the room. A broken lamp was replicable, but this was a part of their parents house.

“We should really fix this place up,” he said.

* * *

 

Darry returned to an empty home during his lunch break. It was oddly quiet. Not the same quiet as knowing dad won’t be in the garage and mom won’t chatting on the porch with any of the boys, but his brothers were still absent in a different way for now. It started off with when he pushed the gate open. It was rusted. Then walked over the overgrown lawn to get to the porch. They were getting to it, and it was still green from all the rain. Then the front door. The hinges squeaked more than they should and the screen door had a small hole punched into it (thanks a bunch, Steve). There was only so much they could do.

Darry knew how to tile a roof and a number of other things but he wasn’t certain how to repair the rest of the place. He had been talking to the guys he works with but t brought back mixed responses.

Once he was inside he passed by Sodapop and Ponyboy’s open bedroom door. Darry’s habit of checking the room got ahold of him and made him pause. Pony was at school (he hoped) and Soda rarely returned home during any of his breaks. He usually hung around with Steve. Darry’s other habit of picking up after his brothers nudged him into walking in and give into his urge to adjust everything just right.

At least there was a visible effort of making the bed this morning. It amounted to the sheet covering but not straightened on the bed. Most of the dirty laundry was kicked into one corner not including what was clearly from this morning. Ponyboy’s tower of books was leaning but had yet to fall over. There was a small stack of weights stolen from Darry’s room most likely by Soda. Darry sighed. He attended to each section one at a time when he got to the desk.

By now the desk essentially belonged to Ponyboy. He used it most often for schoolwork but did a lot of extra writing as of late. It was covered in miscellaneous papers and old cigarettes.

As Darry made an attempt at organizing the pages to allow for more space, it confused him how his little brother was able to sit at this mess to cool off his head instead of losing it. He took a glance at Ponyboy’s handwriting to see if the loose pages had a connection with one another. Most of it was schoolwork but the rest of it was scribbles to him. Darry opened a random desk drawer to place them in. The first thing he saw was graded schoolwork.

So Darry pulled out a folder with an A- written over it. In total, Ponyboy’s grades were holding better than the year before. He was a decent student with decent grades, though it never seemed like that while the work was in the process of getting completed. It would intrigue Darry how Ponyboy could push himself in some regards and fall flat on his face without a helping hand in others if Darry wasn’t the one who felt he was the one who had to pull him back up. They both had three more years to make those decisions until Ponyboy was “free” and had to make the biggest choice of his life on his own.

He opened the folder to see if he could fit the other papers into it until he set it on the desk and realized how packed it really was. Was this all for one project? Pony doesn’t usually run to his family over every good grade he receives like when he was little but usually he can spin it into an excuse to get a favor or get them all out to eat. Darry opened past the title to the first page.

_When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house…_

It was too much and too long for Darry to read but he scanned through a few of the pages. All of it was handwritten and each chapter was stapled into a separate section. The first few pages seemed to revolve around last year when Ponyboy got jumped by the Socs. Darry barely remembers that event, as it was so small in comparison to the aftermath, but thinking on it that really was the precursor to the whole incident with Johnny and Dally.

As he read further Darry started to catch his own name.

_Darry isn’t ever sorry for anything he does._

_It drives my brother Darry nuts…_

_He would be real handsome if his eyes weren’t so cold._

_Darry thought I was just another mouth to feed and somebody to holler at._

_I didn’t hardly think of him as being human_

“Geez, kid, tell me how you really feel,” Darry muttered to himself. He told himself those words didn’t hurt when he already suspected Ponyboy was thinking them, but it still made him not want to read any more of it.

The tiny clock from their parent’s shelf down the hall somehow sounded louder than ever. He knew he should be heading back to work soon. So Darry put everything into order the best he could before he shut the drawers and left the house again.

Upon walking in the door again that night, Ponyboy was already home from school. He wasn’t alone. There was some other kid who Darry didn’t recognize next to Pony looking at the pictures of their parents on the shelf. He looked to be Ponyboy’s age but didn’t have the tuff hair or visible stance of a greaser. As he looked in Darry’s direction Ponyboy was at the tail end of a sentence about their father when Darry walked in. He trailed off into silence.

“Hi there, um, Mr. Curtis.” said the boy.

Darry wasn’t sure what to say to the stranger and he could tell Ponyboy was holding back a snicker. Darry considered saying _Mr. Curtis was my father_ but that would make it way worse. His thoughts turned to the state of the house again. It was in good shape but not enough to expect guests he didn’t know.

“Hello.” That’s all Darry could manage. The other young man shifted awkwardly.

Darry spent the rest of the night in his room. While he was tired from work he did his best not to pass out. He could hear the two in the other room, just talking, not sounding confrontational. Once he heard the other door close and the boy was gone Darry left the room and didn’t say anything for a long time. There was just the two of them standing in the kitchen as well as the entire house.

“I can start setting up for dinner, if you want,” said Ponyboy once they were both present in the kitchen. Darry wondered if his brother had already caught on to his silence. Usually everyone who knew Pony aware of how keen he was on picking up on details, especially about people, but now having read excerpts from that project Darry wonders just how many things he’s kept to himself.

“You can just set the table,” said Darry. His voice had a cool tone, but if that was one more thing Ponyboy noticed he didn’t show it.

Ponyboy’s hair was back to its darkened color once again but had a few stray strands of blonde near the bangs. Darry wasn’t certain if Pony hadn’t bothered to cut them or if that’s what he wanted for some reason.

Darry started off something simple by digging out one of the pots buried way back in the cabinet to start boiling water. The brothers had tried to keep it organized but stacking the items via size was not practical. It rattled up a storm, and so did the plates as Ponyboy took them out for the table. Ponyboy hung around the table as Darry stayed at the stove to wait for the water to boil.

“Does he know you’re a greaser?” Darry asked Ponyboy.

Ponyboy lifted his head up from the table and the clouds.

“Of course. Everybody knows that I’m a greaser. That I’m a hood.”

Darry didn’t mind that vocabulary, but the context he said it in. It wasn’t the word itself, but it sounded like it came from the mouths of the townsfolk and not Ponyboy’s. Darry remembers high school too. Their problems didn’t start after their parents.

“Did your friend have a problem with it?”

“My - ? Oh, he’s someone I got partnered with at school. We’re hammering out a school project.”

“Oh, a _school project_.” Darry didn’t intend to have an edge to his voice but couldn’t stop himself.

“You know I have friends my age Darry, don’t you? Also can you look over some of my math problems?” Ponyboy never missed curfew anymore. He was also getting better at cooking and helping around the house.

“You never seem to spend any time with them. Are you ashamed?” Darry said.

“Did I do something wrong?” Ponyboy asked.

Darry sighed. “I don’t know, Pony. Perhaps I’m too cold and unfeeling to understand.”

“What?”

Darry turned away from the stove to face Ponyboy at the table. “That I drive you nuts, that I don’t know how to be sorry, that I’m some kinda robot,”

The recognition lit up in Ponyboy’s eyes. “Have you been going through my things?”

Darry stopped. Invading the privacy of either of his brothers would never be something to cross his mind, but that’s not an inaccurate description.

“No, don’t make it sound like it’s something it wasn’t-”

“No, I kept that binder in my drawer. Second one down. That’s not something you stumble across,” Ponyboy made a face as if he liked being on the other end of getting caught in the act for once, and that made Darry’s blood boil, “So you went through my things.”

Darry gathered his thoughts to do his best not to get too angry or explode, “All I was doing was straightening things up. Maybe if you decided to clean your room every once in a while that wouldn’t be an issue.”

Ponyboy stood up from his chair so fast it fell back to the floor. “Well maybe I’d remember to clean my room if I had any room to think! You’re breathing down my neck all the time! I do whatever I can and you’re never satisfied. All you want is more.”

“Is that who you actually think I am? Can you think of anyone outside of you? You think I don’t have people breathing down _my_ neck too, watching my every move? Are you aware of the kind of trouble saying how awful I am to your teachers could have gotten us into? After we dodged that bullet last year?”

“What are you talking about? I never said anything-”

At that moment they heard they front door open. Judging by the sounds from the mail being gathered, it was Sodapop. Neither of them said anything. They’d been making an attempt to fight less for Soda’s sake. Ponyboy pressed his lips together. If this had been any other time Darry would have admired the reign Ponyboy had over his anger.

Instead Ponyboy walked out of the room and fished for his coat.

Darry took one deep breath and made an attempt to lower his tone. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Relax. I’m only going on the front porch.”

Pony walked right past Darry, and he was noticing that Pony was only a few inches shy of surpassing his height. Darry also knew there were cigarettes in the coat pocket. He realized the smoking habit than likely mentioned in the report too. Excellent.

The door didn’t slam. At least he was being considerate.

“Are you two fighting?” Sodapop asked, popping his head into he kitchen opening.

Darry rubbed his temples with both hands. “I dunno where you’d get that idea.”

“Really? Because the pot is burning.”

The smell hit Darry the moment the realization did. He dashed to the stove and shut it off as fast as he could. For once he was grateful for was they didn’t have a smoke detector that could go off.

As Darry rubbed a hand over his face Sodapop casually grabbed a potholder to fan the smell away.

“Can you at least wash up before you eat?” said Darry, “In case you haven’t noticed there’s a difference between real oil and cooking oil, Soda.”

Soda gave a lingering glance at him and any signs of trouble in the kitchen. It wasn’t the first time they burned a cooking appliance. They should get new ones but he can’t get it out of his head that mom and dad bought them first. The burning smell wouldn’t leave either.

The next morning Darry was in the shower gathering his thoughts together. It may have given him the space and atmosphere to clear his head, but that also made room for the remainder of his worries to crash over him.

There was grime in-between the tiles. The showerhead needed cleaning and Darry wasn’t sure how to do that. He dipped his head into the spray and let it overtake him.

That’s when the bathroom door flew open and hit the wall. Darry startled.

“What the hell?” he called out.

“Oh, I’m sorry, am I invading your privacy?” Ponyboy asked, “How tragic.”

Darry pulled back the shower curtain for just his face so the cold air wouldn’t take over. He shot his baby brother the harshest glare he could, but he imagined that was diminished by the wet hair and beads of water.

“Ponyboy Michael, I swear to god-”

 At that very moment Sodapop entered through the door, only dressed from the waist up, “Hey Darry, you know where my jeans are? Like, they don’t have to be good but could you iron them real quick?”

“Can you get out of here?!”

Sodapop rolled his eyes and walked off, hanger still in hand.

Darry eyed Ponyboy again, who had a toothbrush hanging from his mouth.

“You flush that toilet and I’m blocking the drain with your shirt.”

Ponyboy spat in the sink. “That’ll be a pain to unclog.”

“Keep it up with that smart mouth I’m making you do it.”

Ponyboy managed to leave, but not before wiping his mouth on the outside of the shower curtain.

They had all gotten used to sharing a small space but it got to an annoying limit. That space only had to be occupied a few hours of the day, after Darry and Soda were too tired from work and Ponyboy was still stressing on his homework. The most space they had away from one another was during their routines during the day. The least space they had was the morning drive Sodapop gave Darry in the Ford.

“Darry, are you absolutely _certain_ you aren’t fighting?” Sodapop asked, sounding unconvinced.

Darry pressed his forehead to the window.

Darry didn’t want to resort to not speaking to or ignoring Ponyboy. Doing so was an option that felt like an easy out but he knew would result in more problems for him, his brothers, and the environment of their home. None of them ever locked their doors in the house and they never had to. When Darry got home that night the door to Ponyboy and Soda’s room wasn’t even closed. He could see Ponyboy at his desk in plain view of where Darry was leaning. Darry knocked gently.

“Pony?” He asked.

Ponyboy didn’t turn around. There was a long moment of his head down looking at one of his notebooks before he let out a “Hm?”

There was a jacket, one Darry knew wasn’t Soda’s or his, lying over the bed touching the floor, but Darry held on to the comment he was thinking of. He instead walked in and picked it up, moving it over so he could take a seat on the bed.

“I ain’t gonna yell at you,” Darry said, “I only wanna talk.”

Ponyboy didn’t respond for a moment. Then he flipped over the notebook under his hands and slid it to the side of the desk.

“Explain polynomials to me first.” Ponyboy said.

The page was covered in eraser shavings and unsolved math problems. Darry was the only one in the house who was close to decent at math.

Darry leaned over and looked it over. He managed to get his head together and explain what was right and wrong. Math was easier because it wasn’t usually keen on moral gray areas. It gave them a few minutes to have something concrete to focus on, something to calm down his voice.

Once they went through every one the room became awkwardly silent. Darry gripped onto the jacket.

“Why your teacher?” Darry asked, “Why not any of us?”

“My assignment was to talk about something I went through,” Ponyboy was holding his head up with his elbow on the desk, “Also there wasn’t much in there you guys didn’t know. I didn’t think it mattered.”

Considering what he read, that statement gave Darry a punch in the gut.

“No, there were a lot of things you didn’t tell us,” Darry said, “If that’s what you really think, if you feel like leaving the house, crash with someone else for a few days, we can make that work. If you’re too afraid of me.”

Ponyboy looked puzzled, “I’m not-” Ponyboy restructured the sentence in his head, “I’m not scared of you too much like that. What’s got you thinking that?”

“You wrote to your teacher that hit you.”

Ponyboy’s head shot up from his hand. It required a moment for it all to filter through his brain. “Oh! Is that why-? I didn’t mean – you must think – Well I didn’t think you’d be _reading_ it at all in the first place I just – That’s not what I _meant_ Darry. I mean. Nobody remembers the parts _before_ Scarlett O’Hara leaves her home!”

“What?”

Ponyboy turned around to pull the binder out from the drawer. “My teacher read the whole thing. You didn’t read up until the end.” Ponyboy opened up the packet and started flipping through various pages. “ _Darry was the unofficial leader, because he kept his head best…. Darry was too smart to be a greaser…He wasn’t going to be any hood when he got old, he was going to be somewhere…._ ”

Then Ponyboy searched for one paragraph in particular, the one involving the night at the hospital, when Darry cried when they reunited with each other. Darry assumed at the time that when Pony cried out to him and ran into his arms, it was out of relief and not some new understanding.

He still didn’t feel great about this, but an immense amount of relief still unwound in his chest.

“Didn’t you get a C+ in that class overall?” Darry asked, “What kinda teacher you got that gives you an A- when you basically wrote a whole book for class?”

“It was handed in late.” That was no surprise, “Geez, Dar, after all this I need a new hiding place for my journal.”

Darry raised an eyebrow. “You keep a journal?”

“What, you think I should be studying instead?” Ponyboy shrugged, “Don’t get your hopes up. It’s not interesting.”

Darry looked at the packets in Ponyboy’s hands again.

“Can I see that again?” Darry asked. Ponyboy nodded and handed it into Darry’s hands. He flipped through the handwritten pages, the extensiveness of the notes, the amount of details and care he went into talking about every person he encountered in those few days, “Are you going to do anything with this? This is…good.”

Ponyboy shrugged, “I dunno. It was just something I needed to do. I had to get it down before it wasn’t relevant anymore.”

Darry took a good look at Ponyboy. Even after all he went through his baby brother looked a little more scared, but not cold. That’s what Darry and Soda worried about the most, of their environment freezing that wild heart of his. Darry wondered if perhaps for every cold mistake he made he unconsciously made up for it with warm gestures like taking care of Pony when he was sick. Ruining all of that scared the hell out of him, and the one thing they most had in common was how much they hated admitting they were scared. Darry went to playfully sock Ponyboy in the arm, but he ruffled his hair instead.

* * *

Ponyboy still had nightmares. Tonight was one of the bad nights. Sodapop was dealing with it by gently brushing his brother’s hair from his forehead and tucking them in the back of his ear. He couldn’t quite tell if Pony was awake or asleep but he appeared more serene as he nuzzled into the crook of Sodapop’s shoulder.

Sodapop met eyes with the framed horses on their walls. Horses still calmed him. It made him doze off. He dreamed of sunlight. Not a sunset or sunrise, just ever-present rays of light. Once his eyes opened again there was a rosy color breaching through their window and Ponyboy wasn’t in the bed anymore. He brushed over the vacant space and found it was still warm.

It wasn’t long before they would all be off to school and work. There were noises like clacking plates coming from the kitchen. Sodapop got out of bed and walked out into the hall. The scent of food was luring him out.

When Soda made it to the kitchen Ponyboy was at the stove staring at the breakfast frying on the pan. He looked solemnly at the rising smoke. Darry was at the icebox was digging for the last of the chocolate cake.

“Darry, I’m thinking of staying home today,” Ponyboy muttered, “I don’t feel so hot.”

Darry immediately leaned over and pressed his palm over Ponyboy’s forehead. “Yeah, you don’t feel hot. At all. Nice try.”

Ponyboy closed his eyes in frustration and pulled his head away from the pan’s heat. It didn’t help that Pony has tried to fake with Darry before to get out of school, but it wasn’t Darry’s fault for not knowing. Sodapop felt he had to say something.

“Actually he wasn’t feeling too good in the room this morning.” said Sodapop, “I was checking on him.”

While he hasn’t missed school much this year, at least not nearly as much as the year before. Sodapop didn’t think about that, only the trembling memory from the night before.

Darry glanced over at Soda, who was currently only in his underwear. He ignored that, then walked over to inspect Pony again. His little brother wilted back a little at the touch. Darry narrowed his eyes.

“You know we can’t take off work.”

“C’mon, he’s fifteen. I was on my own before him.” said Sodapop.

“Yeah, when you weren’t the only one in the house,” said Darry

“At least he ain’t playing hooky. Not exactly.”

Darry released Ponyboy, “You wanna stay on your own? Is that something you would wanna do?”

“I’ll be okay,” said Ponyboy, “I’ll stay at home. I won’t go nowhere. Then later the boys will come over and I’ll hang around them.”

Their thoughts dragged them to the memory of Two-Bit sitting cross-legged on their couch.

_“What?” said Two-Bit, “I never wanna see that look on the face of the man who never locks his door.”_

_“That doesn’t stop invitations from existing.”_

“Alright,” said Darry, “But I need you to do something. Staying home when you’re not sick don’t mean you get permission to louse around all day, got it?”

Darry instructed him to made him pull out the weeds in the backyard. That’s the way Darry thought to throw your grief into the work in order to come out stronger. Sodapop had a different way of seeing things but wasn’t in the mood to argue. He never was.

Sodapop pulled Darry outside and waited for him in the car. There were a few things Soda did that made him feel like he was useful. One was fixing things, which he knew he was good at. There was a broken radio in the backseat. It wasn’t working right so he was bringing it in to fix it up. Fixing certain things was some of the few things he felt good at, not just cars. Made him feel needed.

“He had the nightmare again.” Sodapop said to Darry.

Darry’s eyes widened at Soda, then he let out a breath, “We’ll keep an eye on him. You just worry about keeping an eye on the road.”

“We’re driving nowhere special, Darry. I’m close enough to the speed limit.”

“It’s not about the speed limit. Or getting pulled over. It’s about knowing I’m not in the passenger seat with Steve McQueen over here.”

“Well you’re the one who taught me how to drive so whose fault is that?”

Darry had been hounding both of them lately. Not that he wasn’t before recently, but as the middle child Sodapop wasn’t used to being under the spotlight as often.

“You’re still a kid too. Is that something you forget?” said Darry. It is something he forgets. Sodapop felt like a grown man even before the accident. It made him worry about the driving too. He tried not to let it get to him as he dropped Darry off.

During the day Soda roamed over to Ponyboy’s school, his old high school, to pick up the homework. He roamed through the halls. He didn’t recognize the teacher he got it from, so he wasn’t quite certain if that made it better or worse.

When Soda got home later he looked in the backyard. Ponyboy did a decent job at weeding out the place. It was impressive work for one day, and it was no wonder his little brother was curled up with a blanket on the couch.

“Scooch,” Sodapop demanded. He expected Pony to move a few inches but instead he rolled over to the edge of the couch. His body heat made the space very warm. That space was one of the few things in his life he didn’t need to reach an expectation for. It was just an ever-present right, and he hoped his brothers and everyone else in his life felt the same way.

**Author's Note:**

> Side note during my research: Why is there an Outsiders Wiki page for multiple parking lots but not the Curtis house?! I mean, there's already a literal Wiki page for the actual location anyway but I mean the fictional version dangit! Also, I can almost see why my doc keeps correcting Ponyboy, even though that must be the bane of the middle schoolers writing essays about the book for the last few decades, but Sodapop has always been an actual word? Darn you, capitol letter! Also also, sorry if I miss a few extraneous details here and there or if it seems rushed at places or if I missed a typo.


End file.
